Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:29 PM for 15h 11m 45s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1876, an express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco,…
Books
Books, Daily Bread, Radio
Daily Bread for 10.30.22: 1938’s War of the Worlds Radio Play
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Books, City, Culture, Daily Bread, Libertarians, Liberty, Local Government, Politics, Populists, School District
Daily Bread for 5.8.22: Manufacturing Panic
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Mother’s Day in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:03 PM for 14h 25m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.2% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1869, the First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United…
Books, Daily Bread, Open Government, Populists
Daily Bread for 4.18.22: The Opportunistic Use of Open-Government Principles
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Bad Ideas, Books, Confidence Schemes, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Development, Foxconn, Mendacity, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, Trump, WEDC
Daily Bread for 12.11.21: A Christmas Gift For, and About, Scheming Development Men
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning. Saturday in Whitewater will see snow this morning, of little accumulation, on an otherwise cloudy day with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 04m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 55.4% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt…
Books, Daily Bread, Education, School District
Daily Bread for 11.8.21: The War on Books
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 4:37 PM for 9h 58m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 18.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. On this day in 1895, while experimenting with electricity,…
Books, Culture, Daily Bread, Education, Fact Checking, Law, Medicine, Populists, Reading, Reasoning, Right-wing Populism, School District, Science/Nature
Daily Bread for 9.7.21: Formation, General
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning thundershowers with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 50m 22s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated. The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. On this day in 1776, according to American colonial reports, Ezra Lee…
Books, Politics, Presidential race 2020, Trump
Inside the Last Gasps of the Trump Presidency
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Ever wondered what it was like inside the White House during the final months, weeks, and even moments of the Trump presidency? Where better to find out than on Hell & High Water with John Heilemann’s grand return? In this special two-part episode, Heilemann has on Michael Bender, senior White House reporter for The Wall…
Books, Cats
Friday Catblogging: Cat Guru Explains What Cats Mean When They Meow
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Kenji Hall writes What does your cat mean by ‘miaow’? Let Japan’s pet guru Yuki Hattori explain: In Japan – where they take their cats very seriously – they call Yuki Hattori the Cat Saviour. He is so popular that he saw 16,000 patients last year, and crowds regularly queue up to hear him talk about…
America, Authoritarianism, Books, City, Liberty, Trump, Trumpism, Tyranny
Snyder’s On Tyranny
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Prof. Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: ‘Lesssons from the Twentieth Century’ (2017) recently came my way. By design, it’s a brief presentation of twenty lessons that Snyder has discerned after a long career as a historian, with significant study and research on twentieth-century European history. It’s a small, inviting pamphlet addressing a big, unwelcome subject. We’ve…
Authoritarianism, Books, Coronavirus, History, Libertarians, Liberty, Public Health, Reasoning, Rhetoric, Russia, Tyranny, Walworth County
An Example of Bottomless Ignorance in Walworth County
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Some residents of Walworth County, Wisconsin object to public health measures to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. So hysterical is their opposition that one reads Opponents say county’s coronavirus safeguards are ‘like Russia’: Confronted by a raucous crowd of opponents fearing government intrusion, Walworth County Board members have backed away from a measure…
Books, Literacy, Trump
Bogus Bibliophiles Benito Mussolini & Donald Trump
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s an oft-repeated tale, from Ernest Hemingway, about an encounter he had with Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, in which Mussolini – by Hemingway’s account – pretends to read a book: At a time when the Western consensus was championing Mussolini’s potential to rehabilitate postwar Italy, Hemingway branded the Duce as “coward” with a “genius…
Babbittry, Books, Culture, Fact Checking, Local Government, Marketing, Mendacity, Politics, Public Relations, That Which Paved the Way
Fact-Checking is an Active, Ongoing Effort
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Laura Hazard Cohen explains that “First-generation fact-checking” is no longer good enough. Here’s what comes next: “Fact checkers need to move from ‘publish and pray’ to ‘publish and act.’” “The idea that fact checking can work by correcting the public’s inaccurate beliefs on a mass scale alone doesn’t stack up,” write representatives from Full Fact…